


A rose by any other name

by DanzaNelFuoco



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, I'm Bad At Tagging, Introspection, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Sex, Shinigami, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:14:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21962683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanzaNelFuoco/pseuds/DanzaNelFuoco
Summary: “How did you know? How do you know me so well?”he would ask, and then“You understand me, then why don’t you see it my way?”That’s it, the broken string in Light’s logic: why doesn’t L approve of what Kira’s doing.Light struggles with that question, like a wind-up toy that keeps hitting a wall again and again and again, and it frustrates him, it gives him the need to open L, to watch him from the inside and understand how his mind works, how could he be so similar to him like they’re two faces of the same coin, two magnetic poles, opposite and yet attracting each other in a force field that excludes everyone else.
Relationships: L/Yagami Light
Comments: 1
Kudos: 42





	A rose by any other name

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [【L月/授翻】A Rose By Any Other Name纵使玫瑰以他名称之](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23124106) by [TINOJM17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TINOJM17/pseuds/TINOJM17)



> Prompt 21 Maritombola (LandeDiFandom): style/rhythm/figure
> 
> Chinese translation available [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23124106) thanks to TINOJM17

“It’s not Kira’s style,” L states decisively as if that should be enough to close any argument about the existence of a second Kira. And, (un)surprisingly, it does. Maybe the task force learned to trust L’s logic without needing more explications, maybe they’re only tired to be treated like idiots and it’s just so much simpler to give in then to pretend whatever point argued against L would really be taken into consideration.

Light clenches his fist and suppresses the need to scream at him and punch him in the face for his hubris. _“How would you know what’s Kira’s style? How could you be so presumptuous as to think to know how my mind works? You know nothing, you are nothing!”_

And yet L is right, that’s not the real Kira, that’s simply a copycat - not even a good one and that’s what gave him, or her, away, Light knows, Ryuzaki knows, and now that L has said it out loud even the whole task force can see it as the registration goes on. But still, it took L _only a few seconds_ to realize it and Light still can’t figure him out.

_“How did you know? How do you know me so well?”_ he would ask, and then _“You understand me, then why don’t you see it my way?”_

That’s it, the broken string in Light’s logic: why doesn’t L approve of what Kira’s doing.

Light struggles with that question, like a wind-up toy that keeps hitting a wall again and again and again, and it frustrates him, it gives him the need to open L, to watch him from the inside and understand how his mind works, how could he be so similar to him like they’re two faces of the same coin, two magnetic poles, opposite and yet attracting each other in a force field that excludes everyone else.

Instead, he puts on his best façade, unclenches his fist, and agreeing politely with him -“That’s not Kira” -he lets L driving him crazy.

_Crazier._

(Maybe the seed of madness was already there, maybe it had been Ryuk to plant it in his head, butLight is intelligent enough to know his mind borders insanity every time he writes down a name - clearing off all the evil, making the world a better place to rule as a God; his ambitious design is too great for a common mind, too great for it to not have been tainted by a speck of madness in its creation.)

Later L would say “Light-kun is my first friend ever” and he would be lying, or pretending to.

A rose by any other name and all that Shakespeare, that didn’t change that Light still was the only person L was actually willing to spend time with and that lately, their mind games full of adrenaline and wits were what gave him a reason to not simply pass his days in bed, too bored to get up.

After all whatever substantive was used - friend, enemy, ally, nemesis, partner, Kira -it was just a matter of style.

* * *

_Clang. Clang. Clang._

The chain keeps hitting the headboard, but L needs to grip it for leverage.

Light moans under him and he feels it going straight to his cock. L shivers.

This is sick, this is way out of the line - just as locking Misa up had been, the same uneasiness pooling in the pit of his stomach, his long-dead morals trying to resurrect because this is too much even for him - but Light whimpers and watches him behind his lashes with eyes full of lust and gasps “ah, faster, Ryuzaki, faster” into his ear while gripping his dark hair dampened by sweat, the long chain that handcuffs them dangling between them.

L hides his face against the slope of Light’s neck, shutting his ethics away, and bites down on his collar bone to muffle a groan.

It would be so easy to slip his hand into Light’s, to let their fingers intertwine.

L forces himself not to.

He knows there are limits he cannot cross, else he will start believing his own lies.

It would be _so damn easy_ to slip his hand into Light’s, to let their fingers intertwine as he pounds into him, looking him in the eyes just enough to realize there’s a connection there, maybe a feeling… yes, so easy.

Sometimes L can’t help wonder if he’s already compromised - if, with his brilliant plan to bed Light to fool him, he is just fooling himself.

Maybe he was impaired from the start because this… this doesn’t really serve a purpose to unmask Kira, does it? Right now this feels more just a convoluted pretext to actually do what he wants without feeling guilty about it.

_Yes, I’m sleeping with the main suspect of my investigation, who may or may not be the most vicious and cunning serial killer in the history of humanity, and that gives me the hots._

“Ryuzaki,” Light reaches for his face, cupping it between his hands, “stop thinking. I’d prefer you to be present to yourself - _ah_ , and to myself, while you’re _fucking me_.”

Should that increase the probability of him being Kira?

Would that really change anything?

_Clang. Clang. Clang._

* * *

He doesn’t remember everything, it’s a little blurry, things are coming back to him gradually, but he recognizes the creature in front of him.

_L._

He looks different, but he _isn’t_ different.

For a few seconds, the image of a scrawny barefooted pale man with dark circles under his eyes overlaps the skeletal figure - white skin stretched over bones, so strained it looks about to rip - whose eyes are black holes drilling into his chest to pry all his secrets.

He would smile - L really isn’t different at all, just in his exterior appearance - but his new face is already stretched in a perpetual laugh.

They stare at each other for what feels like centuries - maybe centuries it is, after all time really works differently here.

“I was waiting for you, Light,” L says, finally and the sound of his name feels like ash, bitter and dry - wrong.

“Ryuzaki” he replies, just to prove a point. The name is as off-key as “Light” and L grimaces before nodding in acknowledgment.

“Welcome to the Mu, _Kira_.”

L opens his arm, encircling the wasteland around them, the most boring place in the Creation, a petty sneer that promises him an eternity of nothing, ‘but if I’m stuck here, you’re stuck here too, just as you deserve’.

Somehow Kira doesn’t think they’re gonna get bored, so he takes his hand, watches the pearl white gnarled fingers intertwine with his - gray skin stained black and red, ink and blood eternally carved in his hands, in his being - and grins.

“Say, L” he summons his new Death Note into his free hand, “what would happen if I _accidentally_ dropped this?”

L looks at him, interest sparkling in his pitch-black eye sockets. “Wouldn’t you die, if you finish your years before you get back the Note?”

Kira, that can feel the centuries, the millennia on his future, all the lives he took, all the years he could not use as a human that are now on his lifespan - deathspan? Mu-span? - just shrugs.

“Wouldn’t it be funny to find out?”

It wouldn’t be a real game if L had all the information from the start.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet (as blood).


End file.
